Molten Corgi Pet

Just in time for the fireworks and fun of the 4th of July, Senior Game Designer Jonathan LeCraft revealed the cutest pet: the Molten Corgi!

Rob Pardo Announces His Departure From Blizzard

Rob Pardo, Chief Creative Officer at Blizzard Entertainment, has announced his departure from the company. His previous titles include Executive Vice President of Game Design at Blizzard Entertainment, and prior to that Lead Designer of World of Warcraft.

Blizzard

Every ending is a beginning and today marks a new beginning for me.

After 17 years at Blizzard, with long and careful contemplation, I have made a difficult and bittersweet but ultimately exciting decision to pursue the next chapter in my life and career.

Before I even joined Blizzard, I was already a huge fan of the company and its games. In particular, I was extremely passionate about the emerging genre of real-time strategy games. It was a dream come true when I was given the opportunity to work on StarCraft, which at the time was being created by a very small team by today’s standards. It was tremendously fulfilling to get to know everyone on the team personally and to contribute our energies toward a shared goal in such a creative and engaging environment.

Blizzard Entertainment has been simply the best place in the world to be a game designer. The best aspect of designing games at Blizzard is that the entire company is passionate about the gameplay within each and every product. From the executive team to customer service to our global offices, every single person is a player and contributes to making the best possible games. It’s for very good reason that the first credit on every Blizzard game is “Game Design by Blizzard Entertainment.”

I’m really proud of the contributions I was able to make to Blizzard’s accomplishments. From building lasting games, to supporting the growth of eSports, to extending the Warcraft world into a feature film, and of course to being able to celebrate our shared passions with the Blizzard community online and at BlizzCon.

The Blizzard community is ultimately the reason why we come to work every day and pour our souls into every world and experience we create. Blizzard’s players are the most passionate in the world and your commitment and dedication are truly awesome to behold. Creating entertainment for you has been an incredible opportunity, and I know that you will continue to grow and become even stronger as a community over the years to come. It has been so meaningful on a personal level to help create joy for all of you.

I’m looking forward to new challenges in my career, but I will always cherish the time I spent with you all and the amazing and collaborative teams at Blizzard. It was both satisfying and humbling, and it made me a better developer and a better person. I look forward to playing Blizzard games as a player for many years to come. Most important, now I have plenty of time to learn how to build a competitive Hearthstone deck.

As to what I will be doing next, I don’t have an answer for you yet . . . but I will “when it’s ready.” My priorities are to enjoy the summer with my family, play plenty of games, and think about what’s next. The game industry is such an exciting place right now with PC gaming thriving, the new consoles, mobile games, and virtual reality becoming an actual reality. It’s like having an empty quest log and going into a new zone for the first time.

In the past, I haven’t been the most avid Twitter user, but I’ll strive to do better and keep you updated there—@Rob_Pardo. Please stay in touch!

Rob

Minor Changes to Upper Blackrock Spire

We've heard several times about the updating of much-loved instance Upper Blackrock Spire, and Site Director Perculia took a few images of the updated entrance:

Blizzard On Stat Squish and Health Numbers

There has been a lot of feedback on the size of player health pools, and as level 100 premades appear players have noted that L100 health pools are around the 250,000 health mark in epic gear. Community Manager Lore has taken to the forums to explain the numbers.

Blizzard

We've been seeing a lot of feedback about the stat squish that focuses primarily on hit points. It's important to remember that we've greatly increased player health pools in comparison to damage and stat numbers. The end result is that health pools will not appear to have been "squished" by as much as everything else.

It's best to look at it in terms of the gear you're equipping. Whereas in Mists, an item might have upwards of 2,400 or so Stamina on it, that same item in Warlords would have around 100. Yes, 100 Stamina in Warlords will contribute a lot more to your overall health pool than 100 Stamina does in Mists, but that's not a number you really need to think about that often. You'll mostly just recognize that the 100 Stamina on this item is more than the 90 on the item you had before, and that means more health.

Ultimately, we feel the stat squish has been very successful in improving the feel of the game. The numbers flying by you on the screen are much smaller and easier to grasp in a hurry. It's easier to compare two items at a glance. More importantly, we were able to do it in a way that doesn't cause any damage to the 1-90 (or 90-100) leveling experience. Health pools, while smaller than Mists, haven't shrunk as much as everything else, but we think that's okay as it allows us much smoother gameplay.

Tanks in PvP

Blizzard Community Manager Lore and Technical Game Designer Chadd "Celestalon" Nervig have taken to the forums to talk about Tanks in PvP. Historically something that was problematic and discouraged, Warlords signals a move to get tanks back as viable specs in the Arena and Battlegrounds. If you're looking for more Warlords PvP information, check out our comprehensive Warlords of Draenor PvP Guide.

Lore

Historically, tank specializations have been somewhat problematic for PvP balance. Taking a character designed to soak massive hits from raid bosses and putting them in front of other players poses some very difficult challenges. If they’re able to put out enough damage to be a threat, they become unstoppable. If not, enemy players can just ignore them. We’ve seen some limited success with tank specs as flag carriers in Rated Battlegrounds, but even that has proven problematic.

However, the class and systems changes coming in Warlords of Draenor are giving us an opportunity to try a different approach. With Vengeance gone, tanks are able to deal much more damage than previously. It’ll still be a little behind a true DPS spec, but thanks to the increased player health pools and healer changes, PvP is much less reliant on heavy burst damage. Sustained damage output can still be quite threatening.

We feel that that increase in damage will make tanks quite dangerous in PvP, but as they still need to survive those massive swings in PvE, their ability to soak damage would be too much. To that end, in an upcoming beta build, we’ll be trying out a debuff that increases tank damage taken by 25% from other players. It’s important to understand that this is not an attempt to make tank specs inviable in PvP. Quite the opposite – it’s just one part of an overall strategy that, if successful, will make tank specs a reasonable choice, even in situations where there isn’t a flag to carry or node to defend.

Our hope is that we can get tank specs to a point where they take a little less damage than other specs (but not so much less that it’s problematic), and, as a tradeoff, deal a little less damage than other specs (but not so much less that they’re not a threat). It’s definitely an experiment, and one that’s going to take a lot of iteration and testing. We may even decide to take a different approach entirely. But we think it’ll be pretty cool if it works, so we’re going to give it a try. Let us know what you think!

Celestalon

Please keep tanks out of arena brackets. It is incredibly unfun for the majority of the playerbase. To throw out a buzzword the gameplay is "toxic".

So, here's the thought process: Yes, fighting *against* tanks is not fun right now, on live.

On live, our solution has been "Tanks, stay out of PvP, for the most part." That's fine for the non-tanks; they don't end up having unfun fights against tanks. However, for the tanks, it's really disappointing.

In Warlords, we want to try to find a solution that keeps it fun for the non-tanks, and lets tanks PvP. Tanks no longer have massively more CC than the DPS. They're already going to be tuned to do somewhat less damage than the DPS, with Vengeance removed. The remaining thing that's unfun about them is how invincible they are; we want to try to solve that.

Feedback from players is going to be instrumental in this process, and we're going to have to iterate on the solution, I expect. There are going to be some players who just see a tank in PvP and have an immediate gut reaction of "ew, go away"; that's not the feedback we're going to be looking for. We're going to be looking for the feedback from people who give it a real try, and share "OK, this is the problem, this is the part I find aggravating, here's the issue with how they fit into the metagame, etc."

TL;DR: We want to make tanks fun to play and fight against in PvP, and we're going to need your help to reach that goal.

Comment by Ledgenddeath

on 2014-07-07T18:44:00-05:00

I was hoping to see it around the 10k area...

Agreed. Or at least somewhere under 50k. Not half as much as we do now. The damage that we do seems relatively right maybe a bit lower but they have to keep it high now to make it possible to actually kill anyone in PvP.

Comment by Rholin

on 2014-07-08T04:48:24-05:00

I HATE how they went from "Yeah, this is a feature long requested, we're going to squish your numbers" to "Yeah, but just the items, your health will still be high as a kite."

I haven't said this in my ten years of playing this game but;

F*ck you, Blizzard!

Seriously, f*ck you with a passion.We've been going through one damn expansion with hilariously stupid HP levels and now we're going to see no !@#$ing change? Yeah, the damage is higher, comparativally and we have no PvP power so even an idiot can pvp with the best of them.

Y'know what, this isn't about the Health Pools, this is about them essentially going back on their word.And that begs the question, what will we have when the next expansion comes out, over a million again!They do realise that people are going to beg for another Stat Squish immediatelly after this one?

Damnit, this is so frustrating, I guess it's because I was looking forward to not having idioticly high health, go back to the numbers we saw in Lich King... God I'll hate them for this.

Goes to see how much it will be when it releases, and how it feels. But (in my opinion) the health numbers needs more pruning. (Why not have two sets of stats for pvp and pve, you're already bolstering low level pvp, why not Double the HP when you're in a battleground)

Comment by Dilbo

on 2014-07-08T17:25:08-05:00

It's probably one of those "not liking the direction of the company" beefs. Maybe somebody in upper management is pushing too hard for future product! Nobody leaves a company they started and produced easily the greatest gaming franchise in the world to sit at home and chill. They prob have a gag order and/or a noncompete clause in their contracts.

I'd be willing to bet that the devs wanted to take WoW back toward the feel it had in vanilla and the early expacs in terms of complexity and variety, while the upper management is probably more interested in maxing out the subs (which they have been shedding quite regularly since Cata). Since the managers control the money and policy, the devs were forced to work on a game that is quickly become a shell of its former self.

I don't think anyone can really say that WoD is not dumbing down the game by a significant margin. I mean we had subtle "tweaks" in the past that resulted in an easier game at the expense of player diversity, but this time around they're pulling out most of the stops. Their current fixation on short-term revenue alienates the core audience in exchange for a temporary infusion of revenue, when the expac goes on sale and people re-up their subs just to try it out, ditching it a month or two later.

OR after 17 years he's ready to do something different? SEVENTEEN YEARS.

It's pointless to speculate because we'll never know. Either way, I wish Rob the best.

It's actually not pointless to speculate when we don't have any facts to go on - that is the very definition of speculation and why we do it. People have spent a lot more than 17 years in less rewarding fields working for crappy companies. Personally, I would not have jumped ship until after WoD was released unless there was some major point of conflict between myself and the management. He was there for 17 years and could not wait another month or so? Safe bet that him and the other devs leaving did not happen because they just got tired of working on WoW.

Comment by benx2011

on 2014-07-10T22:52:38-05:00

WANT!

Comment by nytestar40

on 2014-07-11T11:16:16-05:00

Doesn't matter what anyone says about why he left or why this is going to happen in the next xpac or not. people are going to #$%^& about it.

Comment by Conser

on 2014-07-12T03:26:09-05:00

So they had time to make a new gd pet but can't get half the features they said would be at launch to work?

Comment by Sonywara

on 2014-07-26T07:10:39-05:00

I have never posted things like this before but i am confused yet. I start played at the first summer after the WoW launched. Started with a rogue but after the first expansion released i roll to play as a tank. I loved to see how hard to keep aggro balance your gears stat, kite, move, face away and mitigate/avoid much damage as i can. With the start of cataclysm i saw there is no longer Defens rating im not really understand but accept it. When MoP started first i've played with warrior and i don't beleived what i see i deal the greatest damage in all instance and keept myself alive without any help. After all i relolled to my Druid and i play with it so far couse i love it. Mostly i don't play PvP and not attacked by others becouse of 1,35 M hp keep them away from me everytime. But now i wanna ask Why you are ALL think the balancig of the tank pvp-ers is to lose the survivability of the tank. All class heal themself all class can deal damage even healer or tanks they are and now all class have the close same survivability why? Go back to the basics and let the role-s do what they are i wanna tank as fine as i can and survive longer than anyone else i never ask for greater damage and i never ask for to be the best heal on a bossfight(i only do it on thok) PLs let me tanking and take away my damage give me back my defens and take my heal away i hate the rotation of a druid tank spamming frenziad regenrating on spell i wannt to be hard to keep aggro thats the way of the tanking not ranked dpsing and healing why do you wanna ruin the game for us?